Coca-Cola Company

The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC), headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is the world's largest soft-drink company. The company owns four of the top five soft-drink brands (Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Fanta, and Sprite). Other brands include Minute Maid, Powerade, and Dasani water. In North America it sells Groupe Danone's Evian. Outside of Australia, Europe and North America, the company sells brands from the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (Crush, Dr. Pepper and Schweppes). Coca Cola makes or licenses over 3,000 drinks in some 200 countries. It owns 32% of Mexico's bottler Coca-Cola FEMSA and 23% of European bottler Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling. In late 2010, TCCC bought out its leading bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE), and renamed it Coca-Cola Refreshments USA.

In the fiscal year ending in December of 2010, the company reported sales of approximately $35.2 billion dollars and had 92,800 employees. Coca-Cola Co.'s CEO, Muhtar Kent, earned over $24 million in 2010.

Support for the American Legislative Exchange Council
Coca-Cola is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Gene Rackley, the Director of Public Affairs and Communications at Coca-Cola Refreshments, is on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) corporate ("Private Enterprise") board.

Matthew Echols, Director of State and Government Affairs, represented Coca-Cola on ALEC's corporate baord as of 2011.

Political contributions
In 2010, Open Secrets reports that Coke spent $487,500 on federal political contributions. Federal House Democrats received $161,500 and Republicans $128,500. Senate Democrats received $41,500 and Republicans $77,500.

Barclay T. Resler, Vice President Government Relations for Coca-Cola, was a Bush Ranger having raised at least $200,000 for Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

Coca-Cola political action committees (PACs) gave $415,150 to federal candidates in the 05/06 election cycle - 37% to Democrats, 61% to Republicans, and 2% to third party candidates.

Lobbying & public relations
Coca Cola spent $4,890,000 on lobbying in 2010. $475,000 went to seven outside lobbying firms.

You can see an entire list of the company's lobbyists HERE. A list of bill lobbied for can be seen HERE.

In September 2008, Coke hired the Dewey Square Group firm "for communications work regarding climate change, trade and assorted industry issues."

The firm's Joel Johnson, ex-chief of staff to Sen. Howard Metzenbaum and executive director of the House Democratic Study Group; Melanie Nathanson, former legislative policy analyst to Sen. Bob Graham; Joyce Brayboy, ex-chief of staff to Rep. Melvin Wattand James Kimberly, one-time special assistant to Sen. Alan Cranston; worked on the Coke account.

United States (Coke in Schools)
Coke, national and regional soft drink associations, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and other business groups have undermined school nutrition policies with lobbying tactics all over the nation.

Kentucky
After three previously unsuccessful attempts to improve the nutritional content of school vending machines, the Kentucky legislature finally passed a bill in March 2005 that removed all soda from elementary schools. Before the bill was passed, Kentucky already required that vending machines remain off until 30 minutes after the last lunch period but the rule was not enforced. And a survey of Kentucky schools found that 44% of elementary schools had vending machines despite Coke's written policy not to sell soda to elementary schools. The bill passed in 2005 was a compromise offered by Coke--allowing schools to continue to sell soda in middle and high schools was the only way the bill would pass. Coke even objected to the phrase "healthy beverages" to replace soda, worried about the implications for its reputation. Coke said they could live with the ban in elementary schools only if the bill did not say "healthy;" they finally agreed on "school-day approved." Dietitian Carolyn Dennis, chair of the Kentucky Action for Healthy Kids Task Force that fought Coke on the soda policy, found that many of the legislators accepted money from the soft drink industry so were unlikely to be on the side of the nutritionists.

Connecticut
Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell vetoed what would have been the nation's strongest school-based nutrition law in June 2005, a bill that would have allowed only water, juice, and milk to be sold during the school day, K-12. In 2004, advocates had attempted to set nutrition guidelines on food and beverages, but lobbying by Coke and PepsiCo gutted the law. Coke hired Patrick Sullivan of Sullivan & LeShane to lobby on its behalf. The political struggle included an eight-hour House debate in which lawmakers engaged in stall tactics and delayed the process by adding unrelated amendments. Coke lobbyists also shared data regarding school income from soda sales with lawmakers behind closed doors so that nutrition advocates could not refute the information. Coke also delivered a well-stocked cooler to the Democratic caucus room just before the House was expected to vote on the bill.

The bill, despite an impressive array of supporters, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association, as well as a survey showing that 70% of Connecticut residents favored the bill, was too much for the governor to sign. Governor Rell argued that nutrition decisions should be made on the local level, despite the fact that many school policies are made at the state and national level. Governor Rell failed to mention that the cofounder of Coke's lobby firm, Patricia LeShane, had served as the governor's campaign advisor.

"The zero movement"
The Zero Movement is an astroturf campaign by Coke to sell a new sugar-free drink called "coca cola zero" in Australia. The campaign has involved viral marketing strategies, including buying billboards and the backs of magazines for ads apparently by "The Zero Movement", as well as putting up posters in public places. There is also a website which includes a manifesto. An alternative, critical site calling itself The Zero Coke Movement describes the campaign:

"They call themselves "the zero movement", but what are they? They're a bunch of advertising wankers pretending to be a grass-roots movement. They're spending Coca-Cola's money to try to get you interested in drinking a product called 'Coca-Cola Zero'." 

Marketing to Children
Coca-Cola insists that it does not market its products to children under age 12, announcing in 2003: "In keeping with a policy that has been in place for more than half a century, the Coca-Cola Company and its local bottling partners do not aim or direct any marketing activity from any source to children under the age of twelve."

While "no advertising to kids under twelve" may mean that Coke doesn't advertise on cartoons, it also includes a huge exception for shows with mixed audiences, those viewed by children and adults. Coke exploits this loophole through product placement. On American Idol, the top-rated program among children aged two to eleven, and the show for which Coke is the top sponsor, the Coke logo is emblazoned all over the set. Coke readily celebrates the show's "universal appeal," ranging from kids to older adults. Coke also claims not to market Coke-branded toys to kids, saying that clothing and toys fall under the same guidelines as television. Yet Coke-branded toys, including checker sets and cars, are aimed at children as young as four. Coke claims that as long as there are no commercials for these products, children are not being marketed to.

Countering criticism over obesity
In March 2004, Coca-Cola announced that it was creating the Beverage Institute for Health & Wellness. According to PR Week the institute is to support nutrition research, education, and outreach. The outreach activities, PR Week wrote, will be directed to "health professionals and consumers about nutrition, physical activity, and health maintenance issues." Education, as the thinking by food companies goes, "empowers" people to make the right product choices, writes Michele Simon in her book Appetite for Profit, but is really a thinly veiled jab at nutrition advocates who supposedly want to take away the rights of consumers to freely decide which foods are best for them. Food companies don't mean any education, though, but rather the kind they provide so that they can control the information people need to make dietary decisions. In November 2004, PR Week reported that Coca-Cola GB and its bottling arm Coca-Cola Enterprises have combined their public affairs accounts and are seeking proposals from PR companies to include "reputation issues surrounding obesity". The companies current agencies are Lexington Communications, Burson-Marsteller and Cohn & Wolfe.  In January 2005 PR Week reported that Weber Shandwick had won the £350,000 account. Weber Shandwick senior vice-chairman David Yelland, the former editor of the Sun, has been designated Coke Great Britain's ‘chief media officer’ with the job of "rebuilding relations with the media, after last year’s Dasani fiasco." Weber Shandwick executive Colin Byrne will lead the team handling the account.

In July 2005 PR Week reported that "Coca-Cola will work with Weber Shandwick this fall to promote its new, seemingly selfless "Live It!" children's fitness campaign in schools across the country." The PR firm will "focus on generating local publicity for schools that participate in the week-long program." Coke lavished $4 million on the program in the fall of 2005, providing materials for 8,500 public middle schools, including videos of famous sports figures like Lance Armstrong that encouraged children to be active. The plan offered some nutrition tips, but made no mention of beverage consumption, drawing attention away from the unhealthy beverages they also peddle in these same schools.

Kirsten Witt, Coke's "nutrition communication manager," said the $4 million Live It campaign would not address childhood obesity or encourage students to drink Coke, adding that "the company's logo will not appear on Live It materials." In addition to PR and marketing, Coke is paying for campaign "posters, pedometers, and nutrition education materials along with prizes to offer children who meet the program's exercise goal of walking 10,000 steps in a week." For cash-strapped schools, the prospect of donated educational materials is irresistible. In other sugary news, the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to require labels on sodas warning about "obesity, tooth decay and diabetes." 

Industry Sponsored Research
In September 2004, the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (JNEB), the official journal of the Society for Nutrition Education published an article titled, "Soft Drinks, Childhood Overweight and the Role of Nutrition Educators: Let's Base Our Solutions on Reality and Sound Science," authored by Liz Marr, a dietitian and partner in a consulting firm, Marr Barr Communications, whose clients include Coke, which sponsored Marr's research: a fact that the journal did disclose. This fact, however, did little to deter Coke from using Marr's bought-and-paid for conclusions to defend its products and practices. The Marr article was prominently displayed at Coke's annual shareholder meeting in April 2005. Coke CEO E. Neville Isdell referred to the article to defend the company's marketing practices without mentioning that his own company had funded the article. Isdell was especially eager to play up Marr's attempt to dismiss the myth that "soft drink companies market to young children." In her article, Marr insisted that "for nearly fifty years, the Coca-Cola Company has adhered to a policy not to market soft drinks to children under the age of twelve years. Recently, the company expanded that policy to apply to all of its beverages, including juices, sports drinks, and water."

Josh Golin of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, who had attended that shareholder meeting, wrote a letter to the editors of JNEB citing numerous examples of how Coke markets to children under age twelve. His examples included product placement on television shows and branded checker sets. He also questioned the journal's complicity in bolstering Coke's position: "In short, to dispel the "myth" that soft drink companies market to young children, Marr merely parrots Coca-Cola's false claims about its own marketing practices. But when Coca-Cola makes these claims, some people, at least, may recognize that these are the self-serving words of a company desperately trying to maintain its access to children. When Marr repeats Coke's lies, she speaks with the authority of both her own expertise and the prestigious Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior."

Coca-Cola ceases funding for animal tests
Coca-cola announced it would no longer be funding animal testing on May 31, 2007. The announcement came days after its rival, PepsiCo; made a similar announcement on May 27th. According to the company's official statement to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA):


 * "Coke does not conduct animal tests and does not directly fund animal tests on its beverages, and is asking its partners and research organizations to use alternatives to animal testing."

PETA's campaign aimed at Coke and PepsiCo lasted approximately one year.

Personnel & board

 * Muhtar Kent - Chairman & CEO
 * T. Krishnakumar - COO
 * Gary Fayard - Executive VP & CFO

Executive Compensation

 * Muhtar Kent - Chairman and CEO - $24.8 million in 2010
 * Alexander B. Cummings, Jr. - Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer - $4.8 million in 2009 and $7.2 million in 2008.
 * Gary P. Fayard - Executive Vice President and CFO - $5.8 million in 2009 and $7.1 million in 2008.
 * Irial Finan - Executive Vice President and President, Bottling Investments and Supply Chain - $5.4 million in 2009 and $6.3 million in 2008..
 * Jose Octavio Reyes - President, Latin America Group - $6.6 million in 2009 and $6.4 million in 2008.

Board of Directors

 * Muhtar Kent
 * Herbert A. Allen
 * Ronald W. Allen
 * Howard G. Buffett
 * Barry Diller
 * Alexis M. Herman
 * Donald R. Keough
 * Maria Elena Lagomasino
 * Donald F. McHenry
 * Sam Nunn
 * James D. Robinson III
 * Peter V. Ueberroth
 * Jacob Wallenberg
 * James B. Williams

Annual Revenue
2010 Total Revenue: $35.2 billion Gross Operating Profit: $23.9 billion Total Net Income: $11.9 billion

2009 Total Revenue: $30.99 billion Gross Operating Profit: $21.1 billion Total Net Income: $5.8 billion

2008 Total Revenue: $31.9 billion Gross Operating Profit: $21.8 billion Total Net Income: $5.8 billion

2007 Total Revenue: $28.9 billion Gross Operating Profit: $19.6 billion Total Net Income: $5.9 billion

Other

 * Ed Potter

Contact
Coca Cola Company One Coca-Cola Plaza Atlanta, GA 30313-2499

Phone: (404 676-2121

Web address: http://www.cocacola.com

SourceWatch articles

 * CCF funding
 * Center for Consumer Freedom
 * Coca-Cola Company/Coke Cans Weber Shandwick
 * Coca Cola's Misleading "Myth-busting" Ad
 * Processed food industry
 * WWF and Coca Cola's $20 million Water Deal

External resources

 * India Resource Center (Coca-Cola in India)
 * Killer Coke (Coca-Cola in Colombia)

Books

 * Mark Thomas Belching Out the Devil: global adventures with Coca-Cola, Ebury Press, 2008

External articles
See also Coca-Cola Company: External articles.